Frankly

Messaging app for frank conversations

Description

Frankly.me was a Q&A social platform which targeted Indian users in particular, where people could directly connect to public figures to ask them questions. Questions with the most upvotes had the most chance of being seen and replied to by celebrities. Famous people could publish a 90 seconds video on the platform (‘velfies’ or vlogs, as they were referred to) to give a response to popular posts addressed to them. Furthermore, anyone could sign up and share 90 sec videos with other users.

Stats

Category

Social Media

Country

India

Started

In 2014

Closed

By 2016

Number of Founders

Two

Name of Founders

Abhishek Gupta, Nikunj Jain

Number of Employees

Between 51 And 100

Number of Funding Rounds

1

Total Funding Amount

$600K

Number of Investors

1

Precise Cause of Failure

Bad Market Fit

Business Outcome

Shut Down

Cause of Failure

The
first reason that was advanced for the shutting down of the platform after less
than two years on the market was that it wasn’t able to raise the necessary
round of funding.

However,
Nikunj Jain, one of the CEO of Franlkly.me, wrote a post to specifically deny
that funding had been the major issue. He attributed the failure of their
platform to not being able “to achieve
sustainable product market fit”. Jain went on to say that despite the
widespread video consumption in the market, the video creation process seemed
to be a challenge.

In
fact, it might be unlikely that public figures could find the time to commit to
using this specific platform to reply to their followers with vlogs for the
long term, especially if there were other platforms that could connect them to
an international audience.

A big resource for entrepreneurs and startup owners, in which we have collected and analyzed why +100 big companies have failed. Learn from mistakes, and avoid being part of the 90% of businesses that fail.

Frankly.me was a Q&A social platform which targeted Indian users in particular, where people could directly connect to public figures to ask them questions. Questions with the most upvotes had the most chance of being seen and replied to by celebrities. Famous people could publish a 90 seconds video on the platform (‘velfies’ or vlogs, as they were referred to) to give a response to popular posts addressed to them. Furthermore, anyone could sign up and share 90 sec videos with other users.

Cause of Failure

The
first reason that was advanced for the shutting down of the platform after less
than two years on the market was that it wasn’t able to raise the necessary
round of funding.

However,
Nikunj Jain, one of the CEO of Franlkly.me, wrote a post to specifically deny
that funding had been the major issue. He attributed the failure of their
platform to not being able “to achieve
sustainable product market fit”. Jain went on to say that despite the
widespread video consumption in the market, the video creation process seemed
to be a challenge.

In
fact, it might be unlikely that public figures could find the time to commit to
using this specific platform to reply to their followers with vlogs for the
long term, especially if there were other platforms that could connect them to
an international audience.